Blackpill

The blackpill is an internet philosophy that female sexual desire is very inflexible,[1] that women naturallyselect men based on looks rather than personality, and that women select men with the best genes. Thus the belief system is more than just a belief in women being mostly lookist in dating. For blackpillers, ugly ('genetically inferior') men have no chance of getting laid without more or less tying women down to individual men, which blackpillers propose. Hardcore blackpillers often promote suicide for incels. A significant amount, but not all blackpillers, promote rape.[2] True to their broader ideology and anti-social-justice origins, doing nothing is an especially common thing blackpillers propose for incels.

Some blackpillers have been criticized by others for cultish behaviour, such as exploitation of others, stalking behaviour, heavy outgroup shaming, mild outgroup harassment, promoting fear of the outside world, a unique us vs them vocabulary, targeted suicide advocacy, and a system of brainwashing. Blackpillers dismiss criticisms with NAB ('Not All Blackpillers'), and 'its just shitposting brah'. Thing is none of them vocally try to stop these practices if they recognize them.

The only major forum geared exclusively toward the blackpill was blackpilled.net[3] in early 2019 and was modded by someone working with the FBI without pay.[4]

Not all incels are blackpillers and not all blackpillers are incels. The media often conflate the two, and falsely insist a belief in the blackpill is something all self-identified incels share. Many self-identified incels do not believe in the blackpill and many reject the pill dichotomy altogether. More generally a 'blackpill' refers to anything associated with extreme fatalism, nihilism, pessimism, negativity, catastrophizing etc.

The term blackpill was first used in 2011 by a blog commenter named Paragon on the Dalrock anti-feminist blog and later adopted by OmegaVirginRevolt's blog. Paragon said only mass poverty could solve men's systemic dating issues, as he saw that as the only mechanism that could bind women to men short of eugenics. Modern blackpillers agree with Paragon that female desire in inflexible and that psychology is mostly determined by genetics. However modern blackpillers favor mechanisms such as promiscuity-shaming instead of poverty, to bind individual women to individual men. Facing dating difficulties in Ontario (Canada), Paragon moved from Canada to the Philippines, a less prosperous country than Canada, and married there. In Paragon's own words:[5]

[…] to reconcile that there are no personal solutions to systemic problems—which can only resolve over evolutionary time.

And any solution will very much entail steep trade-offs, in that males can’t have their cake and eat it too—a prosperous population of deferred ecological pressures (like we currently enjoy), without an expectation that this prosperity will increase the mating latitude of females (dramatically perturbing the breeding population, to the point of near evolutionary instability).

One will always follow the other, as male consensus on these matters is practically impossible in terms of inter-sexual competition(as opposed to the broad accord females enjoy through an abundant wealth of sexual opportunities, courtesy of their reproductively limiting function).

Blackpill memes on Reddit were largely shared for shitposting and venting,[6][7] but near-cultish elements have coexisted due to some members taking the shitposting very seriously.
Still, forums like incels.co have been seen as somewhat more extreme and cultish compared to Reddit, e.g. with members explicitly luring in newcomers under the slogan to "learn about the blackpill" and "lay down a rot".[8]

Some of the most cultish members in blackpilled forums tell incels to commit suicide and they actively seek to "spread the blackpill", which means using cherrypicked studies to evangelize others to "swallow" the blackpill narrative and shaming non-believers as cucks or soyboys.
Some do this to lessen feelings of shame or guilt among incels and relieve them from a false hope,[9] some want to change discourse in society,[10] while others are vocal about trying to full-on "spark a revolution". Seemingly, the main thing that distinguishes the most cultish members from traditional death cults is their lack of congruent or zealous community philosophical leaders. On incels.co there are no such leaders as the community admin, SergeantIncel, advocates the whitepill which is all about acceptance and positivity.

The person who first formalized the blackpill, Paragon, believed in radical biological essentialism, a prominent alt-right view. Paragon is white, but not knowingly a white nationalist or member of the alt-right as a collective and is thought to be currently living in the Phillipines. The first two blackpill boards anywhere were either founded or discussion-seeded by a self-described "neo-reactionary", i.e. Caamib. Reddit made it clear they would not tolerate that style of incel discussion and so Braincels was populated next. Braincels was a previously dormant sub founded by a non-racist anarcho-communist named AnathematicAnarchist. The forum espoused a unique version of the blackpill and were not particularly traditionalist or alt-right (outside of slut-shaming). Braincels actively sought to minimize racism in their Reddit community and before AnathematicAnarchist committed suicide, were largely hostile to the alt-right.[11][12] The lack of racism on Braincels was largely due to continuous bans of alt-right users, presumably mainly to prevent the entire subreddit from being banned but also because the mods were ethnics (one was a indian stalinist).

On incels.co, the current largest blackpill community, anywhere between 6% and 27% of users identify as alt-right (95% CI).[13] and 49% identify as tradcon.[14] Their continued non-banned presence on the forum[15][16] leads to constant threads complaining about race-baiting, far-right views, and there exists mild but ultimately toothless animosity between "stormfrontcels" and ethnic users. However, many openly racist users have also been banned.[citation needed]

Part of the reason this clash never resolves may be due to the fact that one of the admins of incels.co (Master) is both black and seemingly on the Breitbart-side of the alt-right, and he also does not enforce his worldview except occasionally and through mod and pinned post preferences. In general he is not particularly zealous in his political opinions, and can be best thought as picking up a 4chan derived political atmosphere sympathetically rather than engineering it. Alt-right sentiment also bleeds into purplepill spaces. Incelistan.net, a purplepill external forum, has hundreds of registered users, but their most active poster in early 2020 is an alt-right half-Jew, while their admin is not alt-right. Alt-righters tend to be very vocal.

Reddit's incel boards were mostly apolitical and the term "blackpill" mostly meant "it's all about looks and hence it's over".
After the banning of /r/braincels, however, blackpillers left on incels.co were dominated by vocal traditional conservatives who have been incorporating more political goals such as reinstating enforced monogamy and marriage into the blackpill.

Largely separate from other incel or blackpill communities, people have begun to share and read scientific studies on dating and human sexual behavior on /r/BlackPillScience, which later lead to the creation of the Scientific Blackpill article by incels.co janitor RageAgainstTheTDL, as well as wiki writers Altmark22 and Bibipi.

Many of these themes can be found in incel vocabulary and memes. Looks and status being necessary for men, but unevenly distributed, gives rise to beta and alpha males, Virgin vs Chad. Chad represents women's tendency to date up (hypergamy) and to prefer dominant men. The higher sex drive and more active love style in men gives rise to beta orbiting. For women, Becky vs Stacy represent women's intra-sexual competition in looks.

Blackpills often mean that "it's over" for incels with poor looks and low social status or other flaws—that is, that they have next to no chance of 'ascending' or attaining sexual and social fulfillment. The blackpill gave rise to various spin-offs with varying degrees of seriousness, for instance, the 'dogpill' or 'birdpill'.

The blackpill is a reaction against the other manospherian philosophy, the redpill. Redpillers and blackpillers share some beliefs, but redpillers believe men can improve their dating situation through various social manipulation tricks and bodybuilding (internal locus of control). The blackpill is also a reaction against social justice movements, which claim that society can determine human desire, and humans are not bound to their genetics. Blackpillers instead believe romantic success without 'tying women down' will always be mostly genetically predetermined (mostly only controlled through evolutionary time, or eugenics, or efforts to 'cheat' such, such as plastic surgery).

Believers in the blackpill have a wide range of opinions about what needs or can be done about the systemic issues outlined above:

Monogamy and religion in general: Traditionalist believe one should return to the nuclear family.[19]
Some regard religion as necessary, while others simply propose atheistic monogamy.

Socially arranged or enforced monogamy: Some propose sex communism and state-issued girlfriends as a solution to inceldom, however others have objected that such projects seems unlikely to succeed socially/politically, as they are well outside of the Overton Window in all liberal democracies, at least, and as such would likely require an authoritarian state that was invested in solving the problem to successfully implement, and it is also seen as doubtful whether healthy relationships can form when a relationship is not "earned", but assigned by fiat. Both men and women often want to be proud of their partner choice. For that, both men and women need to know where they stand.

State-promotion of monogamy:
Blackpillers have proposed state subvention could pay male and female incels for pairing up (positive reinforcement).[20] Similarly, it has been proposed to disincentivize promiscuity and singlehood instead, e.g. by taxing promiscuous lifestyle.[21]

Lowering women's status: Women's hypergamy means that for each man there needs to be a woman of lower status. This implies, in order to reduce inceldom, women's status relative to men needs to be lowered in general. Not necessarily as far that all women are below men, but many in the manosphere do advocate for this.

Ignoring women and sex: Others believe a positive effect of taking the blackpill is that it liberates from false hope and from expending time and effort for what is, in essence, a futile goal. Taking the blackpill means acknowledgement unethical, shallow and unhealthy mannerisms in the dating scene or even wider cultural practices, such as narcissism and lookism (the halo effect and beauty-is-good stereotyping). Many blackpilled incels eventually complement or supplant the blackpill with the whitepill. Acceptance of the blackpill could literally mean adopting monk status and potentially joining a religious community that provides a sense of beloningness and status, or embracing ones singledom, freedom and independence (MGTOW, monk mode[22]).
For these blackpillers, the blackpill is mainly seen as a counterweight to the prevalent and bluepilled assumption that having a poor social and romantic life is mostly one's own fault and/or a matter of cultivating a positive personality. It provides an basis whereby one can reject day-to-day platitude and the commonly fraudulent "self-improvement" advice that is ubiquitous in media, advertising and the redpill.

Nihilism, fatalism and incelicide: Some blackpillers say the damage done is irreparable at this point and advocate fatalism.[23][24][25][26][27]
Such blackpillers are often driven by essentialist views that female sexuality is so strongly biologically hardwired that it would require a civil war to undo the sexual revolution, or that it is simply not feasible and has also historically never been substantially better (which is false since the number of incels is likely at a historical peak).
Some social darwinist blackpillers promote fatalism and advocate incelicide. If nobody is left to be an incel, then the problem is solved. These kinds of solutions are of course not ethically tenable. Also if the core problem of the unequal distribution of female's sexual affections is left unresolved, then this would require a continuous purge of incels every generation.

Too much focus on looks: Correlations between looks, height, income, masculinity and partner count are only weak,[28][29][30][31] so looks are unlikely to explain most inceldom except for extremely physically unattractive individuals perhaps. It should be noted that men are seemingly bad at accurately judging the own looks.[32][33]Demographics of inceldom suggest that there is a trend toward less sex for both men and women, which is accompanied by a trend towards later marriage, i.e. less strictly enforced monogamy.

Too little focus on economics: Economic causes of inceldom like wealth inequality and economic stagnation come up short. Costs of living increasing discourage family formation.[34] Millennials have only a fraction of the worth babyboomers had at the same age.[35] Many blackpillers only focus on hypergamy as an economic issue.

Traditionalism does not necessarily eliminate inceldom:[36][37] In the 19th century U.S., even though divorces were rare and traditional gender roles were strict, around 70% of men below age 25 were unmarried.[38]
In Medieval patriarchy about 20% of the population was poor or destitute, preventing them from entering marriage contracts set by the male Lords.[39] There also seems to be no correlation between how relatively rigid gender roles are and how sexually dissatisfied a modern country is.[40] For example, Japan is the least sexually dissatisfied nation, but it has relatively rigid gender roles[41] for a developed country.
Japanese women are encouraged to work more female-centric jobs than in most countries and earn less than men more than in most developed countries including Sweden and the USA.[42]

Counter arguments to this include that conservatives do have more sex,[43] even though even many conservatives are gender progressive nowadays. Japan is also one of the least religious countries[44] and has a peculiar history regarding their sexual modesty.[45] Historically, there have also been more incels due to harsher ecologies, so Medieval Europe and 19th century U.S. may not be a good comparison.

Furthering the welfare state rather reducing it: Some blackpillers hold that poverty is a better solution to inceldom than mass abundance.[5][46] To the contrary, child-rearing could instead be more subsidized to reduce female selection based on income. Blackpillers respond that women would then turn to looks and status. State welfare advocates also tend to promote broad societal egalitarianism (Jante Law eg), a sort of status leveler that is rumored to reduce intrasexual competition.[47] However, they do not usually put forth a plan on how to reduce sexual dimorphism in the face of globalization. And in 2019 they tend to favor open-borders and liberal internet policy, which can increase sexual dimorphism in the dating sphere.

Cult & unhealthy pessimism: Blackpill-spaces are criticised as cultish, quasi-religious and for encouraging unhealthy, pessimistic behaviors among members of the spaces, sometimes inciting violence.[48]

Bluepill: The bluepill is pretty much the complete opposite of the blackpill. Bluepillers tend to deny even biology determinism, and propose self-help, personality-altering, individualism, neoliberalism, and other self-actualization type philosophies. They also promote an overall positivity as a solution to inceldom.

Danger of a stricter culture: A general danger of returning to stricter enforcement of norms and hierarchies is that it will be abused by those in power. For example the notion of chivalry (man proves himself to and protects the woman), nationalism, obedience can quickly result in an exploitation of low status males and provoke wars between nations, or also possibly authoritarian outrages such as mass killings. It is a balancing act between maintaining order on the one hand and preventing highly coordinated conflict on the other.